Das Boot or the American Fleet Boat

[Rockin Robbins]

Re: Radar. Let's take a tactical look at the situation. You're on a submarine, tracking an aircraft carrier by radar. Perhaps you even know that the enemy can detect your radar. What do you do? What did the real skippers do?

As the user of radar, you know the course and speed of every enemy on the scope. You can plan attack and evasion with great flexibility. You can be much less optically visible by remaining at radar depth as you do so, or retain 21 knot speed by remaining on the surface.

The enemy with a radar detector such as the Japanese used in WWII knows only one thing: there's an American sub out there. This could be crucial information, but it is also a double-edged sword, sometimes pressuring the commander of the target into deadly blunders.

Read Shinano by Joe Enright, skipper of the Archerfish and you'll see that the above situation is not fictional, it is exactly true. Enright knew the enemy could detect his radar and so left it on! The enemy, detecting the radar, reasoned that a sub would only have its radar on if it were shadowing and spotting for a large wolfpack looking to sink the Shinano.

Based on that erroneous decision, the Japanese admiral aboard Shinano proceeded to make decisions which resulted in Archerfish being in the exact position for a very high probability spread. Had the admiral just kept a straight course and accelerated, Enright never would have had a chance.

The decisive factor? Enright had a complete combat picture, where the Japanese had only one fact to deal with. Advantage Radar. Blub! Blub! Blub!

The American fleet boat took enough ordinance to battle to equal a Type VII PLUS a Type IX. What's a sub with four forward torpedoes going to do confronted with a convoy of 500 ships? Not a lot. What are 20 subs going to do? Not a lot. In practice they got one spread off and were driven harmlessly to that extreme depth the Germans were so proud to boast about.

A submarine driven deep is a harmless thing, moving slow. It cannot keep up with the convoy and the battle is over. Deep diving capabilities, rather than being tactically useful, were little more than an "ours is better" talking point.

AA guns on submarines are good for sinking sampans, something the Germans didn't have to shoot at so their weaponry was useless. By their intimidating appearance, they encouraged the poor captain to decide to shoot it out on the surface.

So the big expensive submarine shoots down a cheap replaceable airplane. Before the attack the airplane radioed the positon of the spotted submarine, which had foolishly remained on the surface to demonstrate its manhood. What do you think happens next? Blub, Blub, Blub! One expensive, hard to replace submarine, filled with irreplaceable highly trained crewmembers traded for a couple of popcorn-like aircraft. What a bargain! That's called owned nowdays.

The U-Boats chatted on the radio like a gaggle of Japanese schoolgirls, secure in the knowledge that the superior German intellect could not be outwitted by the hapless Brits or soft Americans. This "superior feature" alone doomed the entire fleet.

Time after time the supposed advantages of the U-Boats were central to their defeat. Even their 2 to 1 hits percentage superiority had no effect because they did not have enough firepower to make a difference.

I would say a very good argument can be made that U-Boats were a total waste of money and good men for the Germans who could have used the resources to make a decisive difference in the ground war.

In fact, I would say that the Germans, equipped with a fleet of Balaos, would still have lost the Battle of the Atlantic decisively. The Americans with a fleet of Type IXs would have had a much more difficult time defeating the Japanese.

This is not to say that the U-Boats were not marvelous and fascinating machines. They were. They accomplished WAY more than anyone, especially the Brits, expected. In spite of that, from the first "torpedoes los" the German submarine fleet was doomed. Reallocating resources to beef up the ground war MIGHT have made a decisive difference. Thank God it didn't happen.